TUPELO, MS: To commemorate Black History Month, Robert Bruce Smith will present a fascinating program entitled From Prince to Slave to Freedom at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 16, 2013, at the Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center, near Tupelo.

Smith, a technological consultant who enjoys researching topics about science, agriculture, and Mississippi, will present the story of Prince Abdul-Rahman. In Africa, he was heir to a throne, in Natchez he was purchased as an enslaved person by a cotton and tobacco farmer. He eventually became the overseer of a plantation, was later freed, and returned to Africa.

Smith has presented several popular programs at the Parkway Visitor Center in the past, including one on the Old Natchez District and one on the Barber of Natchez. In 2004, Smith published a book, Madness and the Mississippi Bonds, about the Mississippi bond scandal that became a worldwide cause célèbre in the decades immediately preceding the Civil War. For several years, he has led a walking tour of historic Faulkner sites during Ripley’s annual Faulkner Festival.

This program is free to the public. The Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center is located along the Parkway at milepost 266, just north of Tupelo, Mississippi. For more information about this and other Parkway programs, please visit our website at www.nps.gov/natr, or call 1-800-305-7417.

About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America’s 398 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov.